Will Grayson, Will Grayson(52)
Author: John Green

To be perfectly honest, I felt it last semester when he went off to become the GSA president and I fell into the Group of Friends. Probably that’s why I wrote the letter to the editor and signed it. Not because I wanted the school to know I’d written it, but because I wanted Tiny to know.

The next day, Mom drops me off early. I go in and slip a note in Jane’s locker, which I’ve gotten in the habit of doing. It’s always just a line or two that I found from some poem in the gigantic poetry anthology my sophomore English teacher taught from. I said I wouldn’t be the kind of boyfriend who reads her poetry, and I’m not, but I guess I am the kind of cheesy bastard who slips lines of poetry into her mornings.

Today’s: I see thee better in the dark / I do not need a light.—Emily Dickinson

And then I settle into my precalc seat twenty minutes early. I try to study a little for chem but give up within twenty seconds. I get out my phone and check my email. Nothing. I keep looking over at his empty chair, the chair he fills with a completeness unimaginable to the rest of us.

I decide to write him an email, thumbing it out on my tiny keyboard. I’m just passing time, really. I keep using unnecessarily long words because they make the writing soak up the minutes.

It’s not like i feel some urgent desire to be friends, but i wish we could be one thing or the other. this, even though rationally i know that your departure from my life is a bountiful blessing, that on most days you are nothing but a 300-pound burden shackled to me, and that you clearly never liked me. i always complained about you and your general hugeness, and now i miss it. typical guy, you’ d say. they don’t know what they’ve got till it’s gone. and maybe you’re right, tiny. i’m sorry about will grayson. both of us.

The first bell finally rings. I save the email as a draft.

Tiny sits down next to me and says, “Hey, Grayson,” and I say, “Hey, how’s it going?” and he says, “Good, man. Dress rehearsal today,” and I say, “Awesome,” and he says, “What’s going on with you?” and I say, “This paper for English is killing me,” and he says, “Yeah, my grades are in the tank,” and I say, “Yeah,” and the second bell rings and we turn our attention to Mr. Applebaum.

Four hours later: I’m in the middle of the line of people rushing out of the physics classroom fifth period when I see Tiny walking past the window. He stops, dramatically pivots toward the door, and waits for me.

“We broke up,” he says matter-of-factly.

“So I heard. Thanks for letting me know—after telling everyone else.”

“Yeah, well,” he says. People weave around us like we’re a blood clot in the hallway’s artery. “Rehearsal’s gonna go late—we’re gonna do a run-through after dress—but you wanna get some late-night dinner? Hot Dog Palace or something?

I consider it a minute, thinking about the unsent email in my drafts folder, and the other Will Grayson, and Tiny up onstage telling me the truth behind my back, and then I say, “I don’t think so. I’m tired of being your Plan B, Tiny.”

It doesn’t faze him, of course. “Well, I guess I’ll see you at the play then.”

“I don’t know if I can make it, but yeah, I’ll try.”

It’s hard to read Tiny’s face for some reason, but I think I’ve gotten a shot in. I don’t know exactly why I want to make him feel like crap, but I do.

I’m walking to Jane’s locker to find her when she comes up behind me and says, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“You can talk to me for billions of minutes.” I smile.

We duck into an abandoned Spanish classroom. She spins a chair around and sits, the chair’s back like a shield. She’s wearing a tight T-shirt underneath a peacoat, which she presently takes off, and she looks awfully good, good enough that I wonder aloud if we can’t talk at home.

“I get distracted at your house.” She raises her eyebrows and smiles, but I see the fake in it. “You said yesterday that we were not not-dating, and like it’s not a big deal, and I realize that it has been one week and one week only, but I actually don’t want to not not-date you; I want to be your girlfriend or not, and I would think by now you’re qualified to make at least a temporary decision on the topic, because I know I am.”

She looks down for a second, and I notice her hair parted in the middle has an accidental zigzag at the top of her head, and I inhale to talk, but then she says, “Also, I’m not going to be devastated or anything either way. I’m not that kind of person. I just think if you don’t say the honest thing, sometimes the honest thing never becomes true, you know, and I—” she says, but then I hold up my finger, because I need to hear the thing she just said, and she talks too fast for me to keep up. I keep holding up my hand, thinking if you don’t say the honest thing, it never becomes true.

I put my hands on her shoulders. “I just realized something. I really really like you. You’re amazing, and I so want to be your boyfriend, because of what you just said, and also because that shirt makes me want to take you home now and do unspeakable things while we watch live-action Sailor Moon videos. But but but you’re totally right about saying the honest thing. I think if you keep the box closed long enough you do kill the cat, actually. And—God, I hope you won’t take this personally—but I love my best friend more than anyone in the world.”

She’s looking at me now, squinting confusion.

“I do. I f**king love Tiny Cooper.”

Jane says, “Um, okay. Are you asking me to be your girlfriend, or are you telling me that you’re g*y?”

“The first one. The girlfriend one. I gotta go find Tiny.”

I stand up and kiss her on the zigzag and then bolt.

I call him while running across the soccer field, holding down 1 to speed dial. He doesn’t pick up, but I think I know where he thinks I’m going, so I go there.

Once I see the park to my left, I slow to a fast-walk, heaving breaths, my shoulders burning beneath the backpack straps. Everything depends upon him being in the dugout, and it’s so unlikely that he would go there, three days before the opening of the play, and as I walk, I start to feel like an idiot: His phone is off because he’s in rehearsal, and I ran here instead of running to the auditorium, which means that now I am going to have to run back to the auditorium, and my lungs were not designed for such rigorous use.